Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WOKP Daily with Meet
Speaker 1: your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
Speaker 1: It is wild when I take off for a couple
Speaker 1: of days and come back and things are just as bad,
Speaker 1: if not worse, than they were the week prior. But
Speaker 1: that is where I find myself after coming back from
Speaker 1: being in San Francisco for the Lesbians Who Tech Summit
Speaker 1: that I have the opportunity to MC and co host,
Speaker 1: and I will tell you know, it's really hard when
Speaker 1: I'm on stage to be able to be in the news,
Speaker 1: and so when I have to dive back in, it's
Speaker 1: like I'm anticipating that things have changed, something has happened
Speaker 1: that is better than what it was prior, and that
Speaker 1: is certainly not the fucking case this week, coming back
Speaker 1: to realize that Jim Jordan was unable to clinch the
Speaker 1: speakership like Steve Scalise before him, that now there are
Speaker 1: a band of nine idiots that are running for this
Speaker 1: position that need that requires two hundred and seventeen votes,
Speaker 1: none of which these people have the ability to get.
Speaker 1: Don't think that you should know who these folks are,
Speaker 1: because no one knows who they are, including people inside
Speaker 1: of their own fucking party. You have a majority of them,
Speaker 1: if not all of them, voted to overturn the free
Speaker 1: and fair election in twenty twenty. So there's you know,
Speaker 1: hots off to those folks. And you know it is
Speaker 1: I can't express enough at a time when we are
Speaker 1: seeing such global unrest, we are wrestling with two fucking
Speaker 1: wars that are happening right now that America is essentially funding,
Speaker 1: because let us be real about that, that when you
Speaker 1: look at Ukraine and you look at what is happening
Speaker 1: to Gaza by Israel and in Israel, we're not in
Speaker 1: a great fucking place. And the fact is we have
Speaker 1: no House of Representatives that can approve the billions of
Speaker 1: dollars that are necessary to support allies, to get humanitarian aid,
Speaker 1: and to do whatever it is that we need to do.
Speaker 1: Oh and by the way, keep our own fucking government funded,
Speaker 1: which that shut down is coming November seventeenth. If in fact,
Speaker 1: we don't get twelve bills through the House of Representatives
Speaker 1: and the Senate that are able to fund government for
Speaker 1: an entire year, when I say that, we are in
Speaker 1: an absolute shit show, shit storm, shit Tornado. This is
Speaker 1: what I fucking mean, and coming into the presidential election
Speaker 1: where there are so many seats that are up. Not
Speaker 1: only are we talking about the presidential but we're talking
Speaker 1: about seats that are up in the Senate, seats that
Speaker 1: are up in the House. I just really don't know
Speaker 1: what Republicans are fucking running on. Right with their four
Speaker 1: seat majority in the House, what are they saying, vote
Speaker 1: for us, give us more seats so that we can
Speaker 1: show you just how fucking dysfunctional we are. It would
Speaker 1: be so comical if the times weren't so goddamn stark
Speaker 1: and serious, but they are right. And so I'm looking
Speaker 1: around after having taken a few days, and I'm just like, wow,
Speaker 1: so things have gotten even worse Because when you were
Speaker 1: starting out with a oh, Eescalise and a Jordan is
Speaker 1: who we're offering up, I'm like, no, there has got
Speaker 1: to be better people than that, And Republicans have shown
Speaker 1: me no, there are no better people. We just have
Speaker 1: nine worse people who you don't know, Yeah, wild, wild folks,
Speaker 1: And you know I know that right now there are
Speaker 1: people who are quitting jobs, getting fired from jobs, getting
Speaker 1: signed blind over their stances around what is happening in
Speaker 1: Israel and Palestine, that there are people in these United States,
Speaker 1: from a six year old Palestinian boy to now a
Speaker 1: forty year old rabbi in Detroit. The hate is overspilling.
Speaker 1: There is no way for us to watch the murders
Speaker 1: of close to now five thousand civilians in Gaza and
Speaker 1: think to ourselves, this is going well. These are people,
Speaker 1: these are largely children, right, that are being taken out
Speaker 1: as Israel goes to war with quote unquote Hamas, which
Speaker 1: by the way, they have been at war with for decades.
Speaker 1: So what makes this time any different other than the
Speaker 1: fact that fourteen hundred right Israeli's war murdered in the
Speaker 1: span of a week. So folks like I keep saying
Speaker 1: this that hate just begets eight, violence begets violence, and
Speaker 1: America coming out and saying that we're gonna continue funding
Speaker 1: this without understanding the repercussions of what that is and
Speaker 1: Joe Biden trying to align what is happening in the
Speaker 1: Middle East with what is happening in Ukraine and Russia,
Speaker 1: to me is a major fucking misstep. And I say
Speaker 1: it as somebody who is not a foreign leader, who
Speaker 1: is not a foreign relations expert, but is a person
Speaker 1: that believes in our collective humanity. These two things are
Speaker 1: not the fucking same, and trying to paint with a
Speaker 1: broad stroke is going to leave us. Leave this administration,
Speaker 1: I believe in a really bad place heading into twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. Not to mention changing gears real quick, that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump still remains in a giant fucking pickle, as
Speaker 1: you have Sidney Powell and Chesburro who have leaded guilty,
Speaker 1: who are going to testify against Donald Trump, and the
Speaker 1: other folks like, oh my god. You know, I think
Speaker 1: that if I were to go away and come back
Speaker 1: a year later, sadly, I don't think much will have changed.
Speaker 1: So how we get through this with our sanity intact?
Speaker 1: Dear friends, that is going to be the where the
Speaker 1: real work is coming up next. I'm really looking forward
Speaker 1: to you all getting to hear this conversation with award
Speaker 1: winning journalist Vincent Bevins, whose new book is out now,
Speaker 1: If We Burn the Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.
Speaker 1: Vincent and I get into a conversation about his book
Speaker 1: about the decade of protests, and you know, essentially where
Speaker 1: we go from here. What we've learned over the last
Speaker 1: ten years, and what the future of protesting looks like
Speaker 1: given this state of our world, given the state of
Speaker 1: technology and social media, and how and where people gather
Speaker 1: that conversation Coming up next, folks, I am very happy
Speaker 1: to welcome to OKF Daily for the very first time
Speaker 1: award winning journalist Vincent Bevins, whose new book If We Burn,
Speaker 1: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution is on
Speaker 1: stands now, which examine how the so called mass Protest
Speaker 1: decade failed to achieve meaningful change and what's next for
Speaker 1: activists who sacrificed so much. Vincent, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: So let's dive in and talk about what you are seeing,
Speaker 1: what you saw as the mass protest decade, what led
Speaker 1: you to writing this book, and talk to us about
Speaker 1: bring us back to the last decade of upheaval right
Speaker 1: of activism that kind of woke many people up, not
Speaker 1: only in this country but around the globe. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, I think there's two answers to the
Speaker 2: question of how I came to this project, why I
Speaker 2: decided to write a book like this. First of all,
Speaker 2: as far as we know, more people took part in
Speaker 2: mass protests around the world from twenty ten to twenty
Speaker 2: twenty than at any other point in human history. The
Speaker 2: wave of mass protests that really started in North Africa, Teunisia,
Speaker 2: and Egypt in twenty ten and then went basically global
Speaker 2: over the next ten years exceeded even the very contentious
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties. But in many cases, did we not only
Speaker 2: see things go nowhere, did we not only see protests
Speaker 2: simply not work because that would be less surprising. I mean,
Speaker 2: that was basically what happened back in two thousand and
Speaker 2: three with the protests against the Iraq War. What was
Speaker 2: very strange is the a parent phenomenon that many mass
Speaker 2: protests that seemed to be successful at first actually ended
Speaker 2: up leading to the opposite of what they asked for
Speaker 2: if you took a long enough timeline and examined what
Speaker 2: really happened in the years afterwards. So that's this big, big,
Speaker 2: sort of global question that seemed to present itself to
Speaker 2: me into a lot of people that I think do
Speaker 2: want to change the world. And then my own particular
Speaker 2: relation to this is that I was in Brazil in
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen when a mass protest organized by leftists and
Speaker 2: anarchists ultimately created the conditions, not on purpose, not right away,
Speaker 2: for the far right to take more power in that country.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of a personal story, but I think
Speaker 2: it is one that is quite relevant all around the planet.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about those places in which the opposite
Speaker 1: occurred from the mass protest that did take place, because
Speaker 1: I think that that is important. I think that you know, oftentimes,
Speaker 1: as someone you know myself who has participated in countless,
Speaker 1: countless marches, countless protests over the course of my political career,
Speaker 1: it has always been the fall safe right, if you
Speaker 1: don't like something, if you want something to change, get
Speaker 1: hundreds thousands or hundreds of thousands of people into the street,
Speaker 1: and then the change you want will happen. I'm making
Speaker 1: it obviously seem a little easier than we know that
Speaker 1: it is, but that's essentially the goal. When the opposite occurs, though,
Speaker 1: I think that it's not only shocking to those that
Speaker 1: did take to the streets, but those that are watching.
Speaker 1: And I'm wanting to get a sense of in your
Speaker 1: personal experience in Brazil, why do you think that that happened? Right?
Speaker 2: No, I think, and I think that quick summary of
Speaker 2: the way that we view these things is quite right.
Speaker 2: I think that deep down that's kind of an assumption
Speaker 2: that quite a lot of people had, definitely in Brazil,
Speaker 2: certainly in countries like Egypt, certainly in many other countries
Speaker 2: around the world, this idea that when there is injustice,
Speaker 2: when elites commit abuses against citizens, the natural, if not
Speaker 2: the only, if not the best, even the natural way
Speaker 2: to respond to that is a mass protest. And I
Speaker 2: try in this book to establish how that came together. Historically,
Speaker 2: this wasn't always the case. Even as recently in the
Speaker 2: fifties and early sixties, people would not have thought that
Speaker 2: that was the natural way to respond to injustice. But
Speaker 2: in our certainly by the twenty tens, I think that
Speaker 2: assumption was widely held, and it was held I think
Speaker 2: by me in a deep, deep part of my soul.
Speaker 2: And as you said, the idea was that if you
Speaker 2: got enough people, if everybody sort of came out, that
Speaker 2: would deliver the results. But what often happened, and I'll
Speaker 2: use Brazil as an example, I think Egypt is another
Speaker 2: a good one, is that the huge amounts of people
Speaker 2: that do come out to the streets Number one may
Speaker 2: not be the exact same people that you expected to
Speaker 2: come out. So in the case of Brazil, you really
Speaker 2: got a strange situation in which the new arrivals onto
Speaker 2: the streets had different ideas of what the protest was
Speaker 2: about than the original arrivals. Or number two. So many
Speaker 2: people can come to the streets. This schematic that you
Speaker 2: just outlined can be so can be so successful that
Speaker 2: actually a government is dislodged from power, or a government
Speaker 2: is in a position where they are so afraid of
Speaker 2: losing power that they would be willing to give something
Speaker 2: up to the streets in order to hold onto power.
Speaker 2: But in that case of this unexpected power vacuum, and
Speaker 2: in that case of an unexpected moment when results can
Speaker 2: be seized or power can be seized, the kind of
Speaker 2: protest that became dominant in the twenty tens, I think
Speaker 2: a protest in general, but specifically the kind of protest
Speaker 2: that became dominant in the twenty tens has a very
Speaker 2: hard time taking advantage of that power vacuum. So often
Speaker 2: what we saw, to the great horror of the original activists,
Speaker 2: say in Egypt or in Brazil, is other actors, whether elites,
Speaker 2: foreign governments, which intervene. But whoever's around and savvy enough
Speaker 2: and wants to sees that power vacuum, sees step into
Speaker 2: the power vacuum and sees sees the day for their
Speaker 2: own purposes. And they often have very very different ideas
Speaker 2: about how to change society and the people who organized
Speaker 2: their protests and they may indeed have the exact opposite ideas,
Speaker 2: but they're ready, they're organized, and they step into the
Speaker 2: vacuum that was accidentally, unexpectedly created by huge amounts of
Speaker 2: people in the streets and take things forward in their
Speaker 2: own direction.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty you know, it's an extraordinary feat,
Speaker 1: right to get people organized in such a way where
Speaker 1: they go out into the streets, right, Like I think
Speaker 1: about twenty twenty, I think about the most recent mass
Speaker 1: protests that we had seen in this country that did
Speaker 1: spark global outrage, and that was on the murder of
Speaker 1: George Floyd, where we saw, in the midst of a
Speaker 1: global health pandemic, pre having vaccines and really understanding how
Speaker 1: this pandemic was spreading, people take to the streets in
Speaker 1: their outrage and collective grief right that they experienced at
Speaker 1: the hands of watching a murder take place on video,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of want to get your thoughts
Speaker 1: there on how you saw the difference in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: versus let's say twenty ten, right at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the decade that you're viewing, what changed during this time, Vincent,
Speaker 1: and like, why was it so palpable in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think I think that's a really good question.
Speaker 2: I think there's maybe three ways I can answer it
Speaker 2: if I can go sort of later. I think that
Speaker 2: first of all, across what I call the mass protest decade,
Speaker 2: often the spark, often the thing that does get people
Speaker 2: onto the streets is a shocking case of police brutality.
Speaker 2: So this is what we forget. This, this is what started.
Speaker 2: This is what started the so called Arab spring. This
Speaker 2: in Tunisia, it was originally a fruit vendor that was harassing,
Speaker 2: that was protesting harassment from a local official. In Egypt,
Speaker 2: it was a protest against police brutality. In Brazil, it
Speaker 2: was viral images of a crackdown on ultimately journalists that
Speaker 2: set off set the country on fire. So this kind
Speaker 2: of thing is I think extremely powerful. I think that
Speaker 2: across many many national and economic conditions, across countries. Basically
Speaker 2: you have an awareness that police brutality is real. It
Speaker 2: is the way that the existing power structure reproduces itself,
Speaker 2: that it stays in power, and it is quite shocking
Speaker 2: when regular people see it. But the second thing I
Speaker 2: will say is that you said it's quite hard to
Speaker 2: get people organized to come out like this. I think
Speaker 2: that actually what is so powerful, or indeed, initially it
Speaker 2: seems to be powerful about this particular type of protest.
Speaker 2: And I lay out all of these various ingredients in
Speaker 2: the book, and I expend with where they come from,
Speaker 2: but just to summarize what it is, I say that
Speaker 2: these are apparently spontaneous, leaderless, digitally coordinated, horizontal to the
Speaker 2: organized mass protests. And I think the thing that makes
Speaker 2: them so successful and far far more successful than a
Speaker 2: lot of the people that put together this specific recipe
Speaker 2: had ever expected, is that you don't require much organization.
Speaker 2: Like everybody can see a viral video at two pm
Speaker 2: and be on the streets at five pm and or
Speaker 2: at two ten pm and not necessarily know each other,
Speaker 2: not necessarily have the same ideas as to what would
Speaker 2: you what you would do if you know you were
Speaker 2: to be successful, if you were to, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't think in twenty twenty the goal would have been
Speaker 2: or you would have necessarily wanted to, like overthrow the
Speaker 2: government of the United States. Maybe some people did, but
Speaker 2: certainly if that were the ultimate goal, I think people
Speaker 2: would have different ideas about how what was supposed to
Speaker 2: happen afterwards. And so the question of this type of
Speaker 2: organization of people, people coming together around a response to
Speaker 2: a particular active injustice is really really good at mobilizing people,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't require pre existing organization. So in the
Speaker 2: case of many other countries in what I call the
Speaker 2: mass protest decade, they got onto the streets with very
Speaker 2: very different ideas of what they were supposed to be
Speaker 2: there for, and then they ended up there fighting, expelling
Speaker 2: each other from the streets, having real battles over the
Speaker 2: future of the movement. And if there had been sort
Speaker 2: of and again this is a very very difficult thing
Speaker 2: to do. If you had the kind of organizations which
Speaker 2: would have been more common in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 2: you probably would have had some pre existing understanding of
Speaker 2: how to work together in the streets. But again that
Speaker 2: was very very difficult to put together. The Internet in general,
Speaker 2: but specific types of social media firms that we saw
Speaker 2: become dominant twenty tens made it very very easy to
Speaker 2: get people together, at least on the streets. So the
Speaker 2: question in my book specifically, I focus on January first,
Speaker 2: twenty ten to January first, twenty twenty. But I've been
Speaker 2: very gratified to hear that a lot of people that
Speaker 2: were intimately involved in organizing around racial justice and police
Speaker 2: brutality in the United States over those years found they
Speaker 2: told me that certain other things in other countries resonated
Speaker 2: with things that they had been through. I was really,
Speaker 2: you know, grateful to hear that. But I don't specifically
Speaker 2: go into exactly twenty twenty. But to answer your final
Speaker 2: question in my three part answer to your to your
Speaker 2: very your good question, because it because it had so
Speaker 2: much in it, I think not that much changed. Really.
Speaker 2: I think, really kind of by twenty twenty, you had
Speaker 2: the reproduction of the model that was in I don't
Speaker 2: want to say in style because that makes it sound
Speaker 2: a little bit too weak, but that had been seen
Speaker 2: as natural and effective and the obvious way to respond
Speaker 2: to injustice, back to basically Takoir Square in Egypt, in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, and I think the strange thing about this
Speaker 2: decade is that a lot of a lot of the
Speaker 2: most powerful or seemingly powerful methods get reproduced even after,
Speaker 2: you know, not only in very very different national situations,
Speaker 2: but after it's becomes clear that they didn't work out
Speaker 2: in the original case. So Egypt, for example, by twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: just to list one of the quick examples of how
Speaker 2: things got worse. By twenty thirteen, there was a coup
Speaker 2: which derailed the incipient democratic revolution in Egypt and installed
Speaker 2: the dictator that was even worse. So I think the
Speaker 2: ease with which this kind of thing can come together
Speaker 2: in the era of digital connectivity, which is often I
Speaker 2: think a false connected, like we feel like we're connected,
Speaker 2: but really we're sitting at home alone looking at our computers,
Speaker 2: the ease with which this kind of connectivity allows for
Speaker 2: a certain type of protest to come together didn't really change,
Speaker 2: I think from twenty ten to twenty twenty. I think
Speaker 2: it is kind of the same approach that we saw
Speaker 2: at the beginning.
Speaker 1: How do you think that the advent of misinformation and
Speaker 1: just you know, lies, alternative facts, these kinds of troll
Speaker 1: farms play into the willingness and the ability for people
Speaker 1: to glean information quickly download it, and then get into
Speaker 1: the streets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is a big thing that changed.
Speaker 2: This is one thing that does absolutely change from twenty
Speaker 2: ten to twenty twenty. I'm not that old, but I'm
Speaker 2: old enough to remember something that is often shocking to
Speaker 2: like properly young people that I speak to that two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, two thousand nine, ten, twenty eleven. The
Speaker 2: dominant idea, the dominant approach to the Internet was to
Speaker 2: believe that anything that happened because of the Internet, anything
Speaker 2: that happened because of social media, was inherently progressive, Like
Speaker 2: the Internet would just make the world more transparent, more democratic,
Speaker 2: people would have more access to truth, more people would
Speaker 2: be able to raise their voices. Whatever you thought should
Speaker 2: happen to the global system. You thought that the Internet
Speaker 2: was going to push us there. Now, slowly across the decade,
Speaker 2: specifically in the US, by like twenty fifteen twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: we started to realize a couple things. One we didn't
Speaker 2: get like the internet full stop. We didn't get the
Speaker 2: Internet in the abstract. We got a specific set of
Speaker 2: online experiences that were shaped by for profit firms which
Speaker 2: manipulate what we see in order to some more advertising
Speaker 2: that that moves certain things to the top of your
Speaker 2: feed based on what they think will keep you glued
Speaker 2: to your phones. We didn't just get like the Internet
Speaker 2: in its full in its full power, right, we got
Speaker 2: a specific type of Internet, and by twenty sixteen, I
Speaker 2: think people started to realize, like, oh, anybody, you can
Speaker 2: use the Internet to say whatever, right, powerful, powerful individuals, governments,
Speaker 2: corporations figured out how to do viral posts. They figured
Speaker 2: out how to spread the message that they wanted to spread.
Speaker 2: And I think by twenty twenty, twenty one, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: if you think about sort of the way that liberal
Speaker 2: media in the United States would cover a apparently spontaneous
Speaker 2: mass of people marching on a capitol because of something
Speaker 2: they saw online back in twenty ten, that would have
Speaker 2: been read as necessarily good. In twenty twenty three, people
Speaker 2: might think, Okay, but who are these guys, Like, what
Speaker 2: are they doing? What did they see online? What part
Speaker 2: of the Internet have they have they been hanging out in?
Speaker 2: And I think this is something that is a reversal
Speaker 2: that is really unfortunate, because I don't think that the
Speaker 2: Internet had to be that way. But the Internet that
Speaker 2: we now live on is that way, and that really
Speaker 2: affects the ways that what seemed to be so libratory
Speaker 2: about movements brought together partially by social media because many
Speaker 2: many other factors bring them together. There's all the material
Speaker 2: and real societal factors that bring people together. But the
Speaker 2: movements that are brought together by partially social media end
Speaker 2: up having more problems than they should.
Speaker 1: If we had the Internet that I think that we
Speaker 1: could do you think, then, Vincent, to be honest, it's
Speaker 1: not as if the genie is going to go back
Speaker 1: in the bottle, right in terms of the Internet and
Speaker 1: how we see it and what we had dreamt about
Speaker 1: the democratization of information, right like that was the thing
Speaker 1: was that there were all these gatekeepers, whether you were
Speaker 1: looking at you know, networks or you're looking at studios,
Speaker 1: and that the Internet was going to be this gatekeeper
Speaker 1: lists place right where everyone had a voice and could
Speaker 1: be an eyewitness reporter and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: The genie is not going to go back in the bottle.
Speaker 1: But do you think that because of how we now
Speaker 1: understand the Internet to be this force of capitalism right,
Speaker 1: end of misinformation, that we then at some point kind
Speaker 1: of revert back to the original contours of what organizing
Speaker 1: and protesting was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think absolutely. I think your last point, I
Speaker 2: mean to do this book to reconstruct this work of history,
Speaker 2: and it's really like a story. I think people will
Speaker 2: see different lessons in it based on the way that
Speaker 2: they come to the story of the decade. But to
Speaker 2: construct it, I do in interviews with two hundred, two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty people around the world in twelve countries,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people come to the conclusion that
Speaker 2: you just outlined at the end of your question that
Speaker 2: it might be harder, it might take more work, but
Speaker 2: getting together and really meeting people and really forming the
Speaker 2: kind of organizations that allow us to work collectively, to
Speaker 2: work together, hand in hand to build a better world.
Speaker 2: That's something we can't give up on. And then the
Speaker 2: first part of your question, I think the loss you know,
Speaker 2: you can't put the genie back in the bottle, I
Speaker 2: think ultimately in a strange way, relates to one of
Speaker 2: the other themes that really energes in the book, and
Speaker 2: that is that this that scheme of the you outlined,
Speaker 2: I think so succinctly of like we thought to just okay,
Speaker 2: bad thing happens people in streets, lots of people.
Speaker 1: In the streets, right yeah, and.
Speaker 2: Then resolution right like this right all right. I think
Speaker 2: this all was related to a sort of deep optimism
Speaker 2: about technology, but also about the progress of history in general,
Speaker 2: Like I talk a little bit about it in the
Speaker 2: book what I call the Ideology of Progress. Martin Luther
Speaker 2: King has a very famous aout where he says, like,
Speaker 2: you can't just like assume progress is going to happen.
Speaker 2: You have to make it happen. So one million percent
Speaker 2: agree that you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Speaker 2: And I also agree that it's not easy to win
Speaker 2: back democratic control over the means of communication, like the
Speaker 2: the the environment online that we that we live our
Speaker 2: lives these days like nothing like no magical force, no
Speaker 2: history you know, no no new tool, no new you know.
Speaker 2: The passage of time is not going to do it
Speaker 2: for us. It would require just like more effective protest
Speaker 2: movements in the future, I think will require careful analysis
Speaker 2: of what we can get done and then building building
Speaker 2: connections with other people to try to fight fight to
Speaker 2: do it, Like it's it's going to be hard. You
Speaker 2: can't snap your fingers and get back to the possible
Speaker 2: internet we all envisioned. It's going to take like building
Speaker 2: connections with other people and hard work to fight people
Speaker 2: that want.
Speaker 1: To keep it that way, you know, because I I
Speaker 1: do I think about it in the way that you know, Again,
Speaker 1: the advent of social media, right, was about connecting people,
Speaker 1: was about us, you know, being able to find those
Speaker 1: friends that we might have lost touch with, being able
Speaker 1: to see family that we no longer able to gather
Speaker 1: with at the kitchen table on Sunday evenings like you
Speaker 1: know to be. And but what has happened, right, is
Speaker 1: that you no longer see those feeds no right, that
Speaker 1: those feeds you know, are few and far between, the
Speaker 1: things that are overly advertising to you and the things
Speaker 1: that you're being pushed in the algorithm to see. And
Speaker 1: so I almost believe that maybe that is kind of
Speaker 1: the put that the going back is the way forward.
Speaker 1: And I guess I will I will end with that
Speaker 1: question and ask you, like, as you look back and
Speaker 1: you reflect on this story of the last decade, what
Speaker 1: what what insight does it provide you for the next decade?
Speaker 1: The one that we are currently in. And do you
Speaker 1: see it as a reverting back as a way to
Speaker 1: move forward?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I ideally, when you move forward, you
Speaker 2: always learn from. And indeed, these two hundred, two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty people that sat down with me over the
Speaker 2: last four years and often shared very, very difficult experiences
Speaker 2: would not have done so if they did not believe
Speaker 2: that you could learn from. So ideally, the situation that
Speaker 2: they would like to see I'm not speaking for myself
Speaker 2: now is a world in which ten fifteen years ago
Speaker 2: from now, sorry, in twenty thirty twenty thirty five, you
Speaker 2: can look back at the apparent failures of the twenty
Speaker 2: tens and see, actually what are the seeds of ultimate
Speaker 2: victories in the future. But for that to happen, you
Speaker 2: do not go back, I think, but you do. You
Speaker 2: must study very carefully, try to learn from and then
Speaker 2: incorporate as time as time, whether we like it or not,
Speaker 2: ceases endless lyon right like there will be more years coming,
Speaker 2: there will be more struggles. And the whole motivation that
Speaker 2: these people had to spend time with me just a journalists,
Speaker 2: and that's ever sort of carry out a revolution on
Speaker 2: my mind is to get together as humanity and try
Speaker 2: to learn from what happened recently.
Speaker 1: Fantastic Vincent, thank you so much for making the time
Speaker 1: to join wilkaf Folks. The book is If We Burn,
Speaker 1: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. It is
Speaker 1: on stands now, and folks, including the New Yorker, has
Speaker 1: raved that your clear eyed, sympathetic account of the unfulfilled
Speaker 1: promise of these protests leaves the reader with a bold
Speaker 1: vision of the future. Folks, get it now. That is
Speaker 1: it for me today, Dear friends, on woke as always.
Speaker 1: Power to the people and to all the people. Power.
Speaker 1: Get woke and stay woke as fuck.